Your Guide to the NYC Mayor's Race |
The Jewish issues and angles. Every day. |
|
|
🗳 74 Days to Election 🗳 Friday, August 29, 2025 |
| |
New York City Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, right, at his youngest son's bar mitzvah in 2024. (YouTube screenshot) |
Sliwa is well-known for his red beret representing the Guardian Angels, a citizen-patrol group he founded in 1979. But it’s also handy for him as the father of two Jewish sons, who doesn’t have to worry about donning a kippah at synagogue. Though Sliwa is Catholic, he had two children with Queens County district attorney Melinda Katz, who decided to raise them Jewish. (Sliwa and Katz were never married and separated in 2014.)
Sliwa went to two bar mitzvahs for his sons in 2021 and 2024. At the latest one, he opened the Torah ark and joined the procession carrying the Torah. He was so insistent on participating that Katz left her family’s longtime Conservative congregation for a Reform synagogue that allowed him to stand on the bimah as a non-Jew.
Sliwa has been accused of antisemitism in the past. In a 2018 speech to suburban residents, he said that Orthodox Jews were trying to “take over your community.” During his last mayoral run in 2021, he invoked his two Jewish sons while trying to quell a backlash against the comments.
Now, he’s hoping to win over Jewish voters in a race where Jewish issues have loomed large, with Mayor Eric Adams petitioning to run on an “EndAntiSemitism” ballot line, Andrew Cuomo calling antisemitism “the most important issue” of the campaign and Zohran Mamdani facing scrutiny for his critical views of Israel.
|
|
|
Alisa Roever posted a message for Jews on her social media pages. (Screenshot from Threads) |
Alisa Roever, a New York socialite with ties to Adams, posted a message that appeared to blame Jews for Mamdani's primary win yesterday. “My dear Jewish family,” she said on her social media pages. “Stop calling me and complaining. NYC the largest Jewish after Israel! Jews own real estate, banks, media. Mamdani taking over the city your fault. It is slap in your face that you are not strong anymore Get together and get the city back!” Roever co-founded the charity Angels Helpers with Adams’ brother, Bernard.
- This may be the least of the mayor’s problems. Adding to a swirl of criminal cases, corruption charges were launched against several of his associates and supporters on Thursday. And don't forget that his ally Winnie Greco handed a CITY reporter a potato chip bag stuffed with cash this week. The New York Times has since reported that was not an isolated incident, spotting other envelopes of cash handed out at Adams' rallies.
- Cuomo jokingly had potato chips handed out to reporters at a press conference on Thursday, saying, “Sometimes a bag of potato chips is just a bag of potato chips.” Of course, he made sure to post the video on X as part of his social media rebrand.
|
|
|
- After we fact-checked what Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said about Mamdani on CNBC, host Andrew Ross Sorkin issued his own clarification on air.
- Greenblatt “made a point of saying that Zohran Mamdani had not met with any mainstream Jewish institutions,” said Sorkin, who is Jewish. “The truth is, and I didn’t know this in the moment, but he had actually visited a whole number of synagogues.”
The ADL told us Greenblatt meant that Mamdani did not visit any Jewish organizations after the primary. He gave Sorkin the same explanation, though the host noted that no “time element” was mentioned on air. He added, “I don’t know about the extent of all of this, and by the way, I would welcome Zohran Mamdani to come on this airwave.”
|
|
|
We covered the triumph of Omar Fateh, a young democratic socialist who has drawn comparisons to Mamdani, in his bid to unseat Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Fateh won the endorsement of Minnesota's Democratic party in July.
But yesterday, party officials revoked the endorsement. They cited “substantial failures” at the chaotic convention, which saw technological and procedural issues.
- Fateh's campaign said the unusual move of stripping an endorsement represented the “disenfranchisement of thousands of Minneapolis caucus-goers and the delegates who represented all of us on convention day.”
Frey, who is Jewish, said he was “proud to be a member of a party that believes in correcting our mistakes.”
|
|
|
Crown Heights Bites Back held a vigil to commemorate the killing of a Black child that sparked antisemitic riots. |
|
|
Our nonprofit newsroom depends on readers like you. Make a donation now to support independent Jewish journalism. |
|
|
70 Faces Media | 520 Eighth Avenue, 4th Floor | New York, NY 10018 If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter, you can unsubscribe here. |
|
|
|
